New York City-based (Lenapehoking) artist Baby Copperhead and The Stringed Serpents, announces the release of his fifth studio album, We Stand Tall, a contemporary banjo-driven folk work featuring intricate arrangements for his exuberant string trio, bass clarinet, and drums.
In support of his new work, Baby Copperhead is sharing the official premiere of his sci-fi inspired music video “Fire,” a collaboration project with childhood friends Jonathan Levy (director) & Brian Zegeer (animations).
The video pairs Buster Keaton style antics with a dystopian sci-fi vision of NYC in the wake of broken windows policing and the displacement of working-class populations. It features a trenchcoat villain, skater henchmen, and a gardener who has the ability to harness extrasensory feline powers with special homing techniques from his reimagined Devo “energy dome antenna.” The story centers around magical pom pom flowers, which upon touch cause an alternate reality of addictive VHS vision. The song itself has a rolled and driven banjo feel that propels over a spoken-word ethos, tensioned drones, and rhythmic chanting toward a climactic hysteria.
“Fire” hints to these burning times of injustice, when Baby Copperhead sings “shattered windows the city abuse” referring to the racist “broken windows” policing practices of New York City, crumbling infrastructure, gentrification, and the harsh reality of geographic displacement. The video “Fire” is ultimately a sequel to “Lunar X/Y,” a stop-motion from his previous record, The Serpent and the Sparrow.
We Stand Tall has just been released digitally on his Bandcamp site. As a bonus to his fans, Baby Copperhead has added strings only versions of the songs to the end of the album.
https://babycopperhead.bandcamp.com/album/we-stand-tall